Prabhu Chawla, Pritish Nandy & Modi 87:13

Narendra Modi‘s detractors (and drumbeaters) went into overdrive recently when The Times of India reported that 46% of the Gujarat chief minister’s one million Twitter followers were “fake”, 41% were “inactive”, and only 13% were “good”.

TOI used a newly launched internet website to check fakers on Twitter to arrive at the numbers. Status People deems followers as fake when they have “few or no followers and few or no tweets. But in contrast they tend to follow a lot of other accounts.”

Here’s how 32 of India’s tweeters from the media world—reporters, editors and columnists; hacks, flacks and wonks—fare when subjected to the same test as Modi. Jonathan Shainin of The Caravan magazine who has over 11,000 followers has the highest percentage of “good” followers (52%); Shashi Tharoor with over 15 lakh followers is neck and neck with the PM’s office for the most “fake” followers (43%).

Former Illustrated Weekly of India editor Pritish Nandy, with over 275,000 followers, has the fewest “good” followers: 13%. Both Nandy and former India Today editor Prabhu Chawla, who has 97,000 followers, have as many “fake” and “inactive” followers as Narendra Modi: 87%.

The chairman of the press council of India, Justice Markandey Katju, with 6,000 followers, has 40% “inactive” followers.

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It is also instructive to see how many celebrities who have an inordinate number of fake and inactive followers, follow back. So many novices to Twitter click follow on someone or other they fancy and turn inactive when they find they get no responses after a while. Twitter should have a way to delete or unfollow unwanted admirers/listeners.